ELLE Invite Only: Colton Haynes on His Risqué New Showtime Series

Colton Haynes, the Kansas-born model-turned-actor, has already blazed a trail through Hollywood with guest spots—always as the hot young thing—on Pushing Daisies and Melrose Place, a starring role on ABC's now-defunct supernatural drama The Gates, and MTV's Teen Wolf reboot, premieringnext year. But in Showtime's tantalizingly voyeuristic new series Look he shows off the good, the bad, and the ugly as one in an ensemble of characters who are caught guard down and revealed entirely through surveillance camera footage. Haynes stopped by the ELLE offices to talk about the role, his new-found suspicion of public places, and what it's like to play a jerk on TV. (Take it from us, in person he's a nice Midwestern boy through and through.)

ELLE: Tell us about Look. It's based on the Adam Rifkin movie, right?CH: Yeah, Adam Rifkin, who also directed Detroit Rock City, created the show. He's a genius when it comes to putting together new and interesting ways of storytelling. Look revolves around the lives of six characters, shot through surveillance cameras, traffic cams, and personal recording devices—we even shot scenes inside an Apple store and sent footage from the computers to our editing bay. We totally did it guerrilla style. It looks like a reality show, but it's completely scripted.

ELLE: When you walk around in real life, are you always aware of the cameras around you because of the show?CH: I am now! People don't realize that 200 times a day, every single one of us is caught by surveillance. And it's legal in 37 states to be put on camera in bathrooms and changing rooms.

ELLE: Well, not for nothing do they call it "Adam Rifkin's R-rated Showtime series."CH: Yeah, it's gets R-rated, so just beware. My character, Shane, is trying to take the virginity of this good Jewish girl, and she won't budge, so he starts making sex tapes with her best friend, which we see.

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ELLE: So you're a jerk.CH: So, I'm a jerk.

ELLE: But that's the premise—what people are really like when nobody's watching. Which begs the question: How is every episode not just half an hour of the characters picking their noses?CH: Oh, they definitely fall for that too. In the first episode, one girl picks her nose and wipes it on the escalator handrail. Then there are these guys hitting on some hot girls, and when the girls go in the changing room, we find out they're not girls. We show everything.